Running head: SERVICE LEARNING PROJECT 1
My Service Learning Project
Ashley R. McMenamy
Molloy College
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My Service Learning Project
For our EDU 364 Service Learning Project I offered to one of the mother’s who I babysit
for that I would help teach her 2 daughters and 2 nieces some basic computer skills that they will
definitely need to use in their future school years as well as in a professional work setting. The
girls ranged from 5th to 7th grade. Since the mother and aunt of my “students” works in the
attendance office at South Side High School, she was able to reserve me and my students our
very own mini classroom/computer lab that the high school offers time slot reservations for on
certain days. We reserved a 3 hour time slot on 5 different Friday evenings throughout the
semester. This was an awesome perk and was really helpful in keeping the girls attention
because they felt so cool being in a high school classroom like other “big kids!” Each Friday we
covered one topic.
In order to design lesson plans that my students would find most beneficial and appealing
for them to learn, I needed to offer my students the opportunity to inform me about what they
hoped to get out of and learn by the end of this course. In order to get this information, I kicked
off our first class by handing out a worksheet which included questions such as “do you have a
computer at home? Internet access?” The questionnaire also included a section in which I listed
various things that can be done using a computer and instructed students to circle those of which
they were already able to do in order to help me get better insight to their individual ability
levels. Similarly, I listed a variety of potential areas that we could study in this course and
instructed my students to indicate which of these listed topics they were most interested in
learning. This questionnaire helped me with my effectiveness as their teacher because I was
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better able to design lesson plans that suited their interests, captured their attention and were
tailored to their learning styles and abilities.
After acquiring a better understanding of what my students wanted to get out of our
sessions together, I handed out a goal setting worksheet in which they explicitly listed the three
goals they would commit themselves to achieving to the very best of their ability. This
worksheet included a section titled “Computer Skills Self-Assessment” where I compiled a great
variety of skills in computer basics, internet and email use, and proficiencies in Microsoft Word
and Excel into a chart. In this chart there were three separate columns labeled: “I don’t know
how to do this,” “I can do this with help,” and “I can do this on my own.” Under each column
was an empty box that corresponded to each skill listed in the left-hand column. I instructed the
students to indicate their level of ability in each of the skills I have listed. With this information,
I was equipped to design effective lesson plans that would benefit my students and allow them to
get the best out of this class.
We ended our first session with a general overview of the basic computer parts. Prior to
our first session I created a PowerPoint Presentation which I used to as our first module. The
presentation slides included clip art and photos of the many different basic parts of a computer. I
labeled each computer part depicted in these photos and included a brief corresponding
description of its functionality. The PowerPoint was an essential visual tool used to reinforce
learning. These types of step-by-step tutorials served as the backbone of each lesson. I quickly
noticed that by incorporating aspects of the everyday world that we may encounter was an
extremely effective tool that facilitated my students to quickly see the relevance of our lessons
and tasks.
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Our second class lesson focused on introducing my students to the internet as a gateway
to accessing an infinite amount of resources and varied information. Together we went through
an Internet Basics PowerPoint presentation and identified our objectives as being able to give an
explanation of the Internet, to exhibit internet safety and distinguish between reliable websites
and internet pages that could be potentially hazardous. I dedicated majority of the lesson to
emphasizing the importance of Web Safety. We discussed site reliability, protection of personal
information including bank accounts and credit cards. I handed out a packet of practice exercises
and instructed my students to complete one segment of the activity workbook in class, and then
assigned another segment as homework. After completing the in-class assignment, I decided to
assess the performance of my students in order to determine how much they learned from our
lesson. I handed out a performance assessment and gave the option of working alone or with a
partner to complete the tasks and then to submit the assignment to me upon completion. As they
worked on the performance assessment, I circulated the room and offered assistance if needed.
Discussions after my students completed the exercises gave me information on how each of the
girls were doing and whether or not I needed to adjust any of my teaching methods.
During our third session, I found out that only one of my four students were registered
with an email provider. The other three girls did not know how to use email. Therefore, I
thought a lesson on how to use email would be conductive in their learning. The goal of this
lesson was to create an email account, learn how to login and logout of account, and to read,
reply, forward, and delete emails. I began our lesson by leading a discussion about the concept
of email and why it has become such a beneficial and essential form of communication. I used
the projector to give a step-by-step walk through of registering for Gmail, gave tutorial on how
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to send a message and the importance of a subject line, walked through the basics of opening,
saving, forwarding, and replying to messages and finally gave a step by step tutorial that
explained how to add attachments to an email as well as how to open an attachment that was sent
to them in an email. As I circulated the room, I instructed my students to complete the practice
activities in the workbooks I handed out in order to help them become more familiar with using
their new email account. As a homework assignment, I instructed students to log into their
Gmail account at some point before our next meeting and send me a message in order for me to
assess their performance.
Our fourth and fifth sessions both focused on Microsoft Word. This lesson’s objectives
aimed to help students become more proficient in creating a simple document, moving around
the cursor and placing it where needed, highlighting text, saving and printing documents.
Another objective was for students to be able to adjust font, size, style/color, alignment of text,
spacing of the document, using the numbering or bulleting options, and saving and opening files.
We spent this session playing around with different formatting options like fun fonts, styles and
colors. I demonstrated how to use the spelling and grammar functions and emphasized how
useful this function is for detecting any spelling or grammatical errors while proofreading their
writing.
This was a great experience for me. I felt like this was my first actual experience as head
of the classroom. I felt like I was truly a teacher! I credit this instructional experience breeding
such success in my own journey to become a teacher as being a result of the mother reserving the
classroom for us. If she did not mention it or inquire about time slots, I never would have even
known this was an option and would have just had the girls come over to my house and use my
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laptop to conduct the lessons. The entire dynamic would have been very, very different.
Actually designing lesson plans and activities that I had to actually implement in a classroom
environment instead of only hand in for my own grades in my classes at school, it became even
more evident that the integration of technology into teacher’s lesson plans and classrooms is no
longer just an option but it has actually become an integral and essential aspect of the learning
experience that enhances achievement, promotes learning, and in the specific area I chose to
focus my Service Learning Project upon helps students to improve their basic literacy skills, as
well as allows the children to acquire greater proficiency in computer literacy. After the last
session, the mother gave me a beautiful scarf and gift card as a way of saying thank you for
dedicating my time to the girls. She said they looked forward to come every session and actually
did grasp a great deal of the material we went over- they loved teaching their mother and father
all the new skills they just acquired